


Of peach slices and you

by jijal



Category: BTOB
Genre: Deaf Character, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-02-16 00:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18680725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jijal/pseuds/jijal
Summary: Eunkwang has been harbouring a crush on a customer for a while, but talking to him turns out to be more difficult than expected.





	Of peach slices and you

_To be continued._

Eunkwang sets his phone down on the counter, letting out a small sigh and rubbing at his eyes. One, two, three, four— he’s finished four webtoons this week alone, spending the whole day doing nothing, not spending it at all, doing little besides going to work, standing behind the cash register of the small convenience store for hours on end, going back home and not sleeping nearly enough. Hyunsik’s going to poke fun at him again, when Eunkwang asks him for more recommendations because he’s already read through the ones he gave him last time, he’ll tease him about having so much spare time but no sex, and Eunkwang will laugh along with him even though it isn’t all that funny.

Strawberry milk, a sandwich and a cup of grapes pull Eunkwang out of his thoughts, looking up into a familiar face. Pale skin, stern eyes and the cute button nose to soften his features, it’s all so familiar, yet Eunkwang thinks he’ll never grow tired of looking at him, his mere presence making his fingertips tingle in excitement and something like electricity run through his body whenever their eyes happen to meet.

“Hello,” Eunkwang says, putting on his best customer voice and shooting him a friendly smile. The guy only holds his gaze for a moment, the corners of his lips twitching upwards in that small, shy hint of a smile Eunkwang doesn’t want to go a day without; it’s calm and gentle and its subtlety easy to find comfort in.

His eyes flicker to the screen, watching the prices add up as Eunkwang scans the items one after the other, while fishing for his wallet in the pocket of his sweatpants. Grateful for the distraction, Eunkwang hastily pulls out a plastic bag from under the cash register and puts everything inside with hands way too shaky to go unnoticed. If only he didn’t get so terribly nervous around him.

He watches him count the money in silence, and he thinks he can’t possibly let this opportunity go to waste, the guy not having enough cash to pay and being unable to come and go within a minute for the first time since he started frequenting the convenience store. Besides, Eunkwang is convinced he’ll go crazy if he has to listen to another minute of his blood rushing in his ears, heart pounding inside his chest at record speed.

"You must study a lot,” he says, hoping the slight tremble in his voice isn’t as unnoticeable as it is awfully apparent to him. “Is your university nearby?”

His question is met with silence.

“Your university,” he says again, a little clearer this time. “Is it close?”

The guy looks up at him and his eyes go wide, as if he only now realised Eunkwang was talking to him. He stays silent, shaking his head and an apologetic expression flickering over his face, and Eunkwang’s heart drops into his gut, and he feels like a rug has been pulled out from underneath his feet without warning, like he tripped face first onto concrete. Internally panicking, and his brain already going into overdrive to figure out what went wrong, Eunkwang realises a moment too late that the guy must have given up on paying in cash and is holding out his credit card.

“I’m—I’m sorry if that was too personal. I’m really sorry. I apologise,” Eunkwang mumbles, quickly swipes the card through the reader and hands it back with a deep bow, and before he can say anything else to rescue the situation — or, realistically, make matters a hundred times worse — the guy’s on his way out the door, his wallet and the plastic bag in one hand as he pushes open the heavy glass door with the other, disappearing around the corner and out of Eunkwang’s sight. Another customer he hadn’t even noticed waiting in line stepping forward with a whole basket full of food, Eunkwang has no time to dwell on the embarrassment that was his first ever attempt at conversation with his most loyal customer, but the persistent warmth in his cheeks and his thoughts raging like a whirlwind inside his head make it hard to stay focused, as he forces a smile back onto his lips and starts scanning everything put on the counter.

A few days pass without the guy, that he might, just _might_ , have scared away for life, coming to the convenience store for a sad excuse of a meal and some snacks, and Eunkwang can’t help replaying that excruciatingly long minute, those sixty seconds he messed up everything one could possibly mess up, inside his head on endless loop. Had he shut up after saying hello, had he not tried to strike up a conversation, had he not been foolish enough to develop a crush on a customer in the first place, things would be fine, but like all of his romantic endeavours, he had to mess it up because—because he doesn’t  _think_ , can’t get his brain to work as soon as someone even mildly likeable and attractive gives him any kind of attention. Let alone someone as mysterious and quiet as the guy he’s been crushing on for weeks, who, for some odd reason, refuses to talk to him. It hadn’t hit Eunkwang before, but he realises he has never heard the guy’s voice before, at least from what he can remember, and now he might have to live the rest of his life without ever hearing it.

Strawberry milk, kimbab and a cup of peach slices. Eunkwang’s heart skips a beat and his head shoots up from where his gaze had been fixed on his dirty, old trainers to meet those stern eyes again. Blood rushes to his cheeks, and he pushes himself off of the counter to step forward and get behind the cash till.

“Hello,” he brings out, anything the guy might have said back drowned out by the blood pulsating in Eunkwang’s ears as he scans the items, contemplating whether to apologise, explain himself or pretend nothing ever happened. Before he can make a decision, though, the guy is holding out his card, and Eunkwang accepts it and swipes it through the card reader. He hands it back, and the guy gives a quick, silent nod.

“Excuse me,” Eunkwang calls out, letting the words tumble past his lips without a chance to think them over another time, having the guy stop dead in his tracks and look up at him instead of making his way to the exit.

“I’m really sorry for making you feel uncomfortable the other day. That wasn’t my intention. It’s just, you come here quite often, and I—I thought I could try and maybe make some conversation. But I realise I might have gone too far.”

The guy gives him that look again, that sorry, helpless expression flickering across his face, and he starts fishing for something in the pocket of his sweatpants. Eunkwang tilts his head in confusion, watching him get out his phone and hastily type something out. A few seconds later, he shows him what he must’ve written just now.

_I'm deaf. I don't really know what you're saying._

“Oh, oh my God, I’m sorry,” Eunkwang brings out, finally having put the pieces together. Heat crawling up from his neck into his face, he gives a flustered, apologetic bow, but the guy reaches out, signalling him to stop. Eunkwang quickly gestures  _one moment_  and pulls out his own phone, quickly coming up with a reply.

_I'm really sorry, I didn't know :(_

The guy waves him off, slips his phone into his pocket and points at the door, giving Eunkwang the chance to say something else, but Eunkwang, being Eunkwang and completely overwhelmed by not only the fact that the guy is deaf, but that he has been trying to talk to him a few times now without realising, just mouths  _okay_ , gives a small nod and waves, and the guy breaks out into a shy chuckle. He mouths back  _okay_ , a little confused, but nonetheless amused, and Eunkwang tries to memorise the gesture he made at the same time, repeating it inside his head until he has left, and doing it himself a few times once he's alone again.

It’s an uneventful evening, people have better places to be than a convenience store, and so Eunkwang spends the rest of his shift looking up sign language basics and memorising everything from the alphabet to everyday phrases he deems useful. By the time he is back at work the next day, he’s _buzzing_ , impatiently waiting for when the guy comes in to get his daily load of convenience store food and repeating all the gestures he looked up last night to himself. Nothing he will ever do will be more important than this; if one thing, just one thing, in his entire life was going to work out, it had to be this.

His heart starts racing when the guy walks in, strutting through the aisles and deliberating about his choice of food for the evening in front of the cooling shelves. Too aware of himself staring, Eunkwang forces himself to look away and pretends to clean up the area behind the cash register instead, all the while observing his surroundings from the corners of his eyes, as if there was a chance he’d miss someone approaching him if he didn’t.

Not even five minutes later, the guy is standing in front of Eunkwang and puts down strawberry milk, a sandwich and an energy bar, but Eunkwang ignores them, looking straight up at the guy instead, confusion written all over his face.

_How was your day?_ , Eunkwang signs, his lips pulling up into a proud smile at the sight of the guy’s eyes going wide and his mouth slightly falling open in shock.

_Good. You?_ , he signs back, slowly regaining control over his facial muscles, although the look in his eyes is still making it clear that he’s having trouble processing what is currently happening.

_Good. Thank you_ , Eunkwang says, and maybe a little overconfident,  _Are you very busy?_

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him that the guy would reply, saying something back too quick for Eunkwang to follow, and he freezes for a moment, panics almost, cramming his brain for anything that could suffice as an appropriate response even though he has no idea what he said. Much to his dismay, he can’t for the life of him remember anything but  _work_ ,  _twenty-eight_  and  _dinner_ , and is forced to settle for an empathetic nod and a tight smile. The guy chuckles at the lack of response, his eyes crinkling as he smiles.

_It's okay_ , he signs, bringing Eunkwang back into the real world, back behind the cash register with the food still ignored and unscanned between them.

Instead of making his way to the door once he’s paid, he walks towards the tables at the back of the store and Eunkwang notices he brought his backpack instead of just his wallet like he usually does. He sits down at one of the tables, back facing Eunkwang and gets out his laptop. Absentmindedly unwrapping his food, he opens up some kind of documents, from what Eunkwang can tell, and starts reading.

A quick glance around the convenience store to make sure no other customers are around, Eunkwang pulls out his phone and goes through the words he’s been trying to memorise one by one. It’s not a lot, and he’s pretty sure he’s doing at least half of them wrong one way or another, but it should be enough for some small talk, at the very least.  _Yes. No. Study. University. Work. What. When_.  _Excuse me._  He repeats each of them ten times, if not more — he loses track at some point — and before he gets a chance to forget all of them again, he locks his phone, takes a deep breath and makes his way over to the table the guy is sitting at, has him look up in surprise and sits down across from him.

_Excuse me_ , Eunkwang signs.  _What’s your name?_

The guy starts spelling out his name, but Eunkwang’s brain can’t keep up and he signals defeat with a shake of his head halfway through, wrestling his phone out of his pocket and handing it to the guy. He types out his name and hands it back to Eunkwang.

_Lee Changsub_.

“Lee Changsub,” Eunkwang reads out loud, weighing the name on his tongue.

_Nice to meet you._   _My name is E U N K W,_ he hesitates, blanking on the next letter, and Changsub jumps in, slowly finishing spelling his name for him. Eunkwang nods, attentively following his hand movements and signing a quick  _yes_ when he’s done, thankful for the help.

_Nice to meet you_ , Changsub signs.

_What is this?,_ Eunkwangasks, pointing at the laptop, and Changsub turns it around _,_  showing him the article he must have been hunched over for the past ten minutes.  _Development of non-verbal speech in CI-implanted children and teenagers_.

Eunkwang can’t help his eyes going wide, mouthing an impressed  _wow_ , although he isn’t quite sure he understood what he just read. He points at the laptop, questioningly, and Changsub nods, gesturing for Eunkwang to pull it closer to him. He makes it through the first two and a half paragraphs with effort, only barely understanding what the article is about; an ear implant, to stimulate the nerves inside your ear and restore hearing abilities, is everything he can gather, and he skims another page or so, but the further down he scrolls, the more in depth it becomes and he gets bombarded with a hundred words he has never heard before, let alone is able to understand or even attempt to guess the meaning of. His head spinning from trying to decipher the academic language, he looks up at Changsub, one arm propped on the table and his cheek resting against the palm of his hand. His eyes are fixed on Eunkwang, watching his every move from the looks of it, but the pokerfaced expression on his face makes him impossible to read.

Eunkwang points at Changsub and at his own ear, raising his eyebrows at him, and Changsub shakes his head, getting up and walking over to Eunkwang’s side. He sits down next to him, close enough for Eunkwang to feel the heat radiating off his body and smell his cologne, and opens up a blank document on his laptop.

_The implant only works in certain cases_ , he writes, fingers flying over the keyboard with ease.  _Not for me. It depends on why you’re deaf, your anatomy._

_So you can't hear anything?_  Eunkwang writes back, and Changsub nods.

_Can you talk?_ Eunkwang adds.

_Yes. Kind of,_ Changsub writes back. _But it probably sounds funny to you._

Eunkwang can’t hide the surprise on his face, eyes going wide and mouth forming a small  _o_.

_How? How did you learn it?_

_Articulation practice. I only became deaf when I was five, so the doctors tried to keep me talking at first_ , Changsub types.  _I can't hear my own voice anymore, but I_

He hesitates, his fingers hovering over the keyboard as he thinks about how to put his thoughts into words.

_feel the words when I talk. The air. And the vibrations._

“Wow,” Eunkwang mumbles, eyes flickering from the screen to Changsub and back again, reading over what he wrote a few times and trying to wrap his head around the idea.

_Can you_

_I wonder what your voice sounds like._

Changsub scoffs.

_You’re asking the wrong guy,_ he writes.

_Can you try?_ Eunkwang writes back.  _I’d love to hear it._

Changsub leans back in his chair and lets out a deep breath, averting his gaze from the screen of his laptop down to the half-empty bottle of strawberry milk next to it.

“I—m Channgsub. I have not—t talked in—na lonng time,” he brings out directed at the table, his voice soft and higher than Eunkwang imagined it, his words hesitant and effortful, almost faint. It’s something like a loud whisper, kind of raspy, kind of sloppy, but Eunkwang can’t help but be impressed.

_Good_ , he signs, giving Changsub a thumbs-up, but Changsub shakes his head,  _no no no_ , and buries his face in his hands in embarrassment, his ears turning a deep shade of pink. Something inside Eunkwang comes alive yet again, Changsub's shy demeanour oddly endearing and a stark contrast to his usual calm and indifferent behaviour. He taps him on the shoulder to get his attention, something he remembers reading about online.

_Can you read lips, too? Do you have conversations sometimes?_  he types, and Changsub slightly pulls the laptop towards him.

_I can, but I don't talk to hearing people. Signing is what I’m comfortable with. Talking is just something that's been forced onto me. I don’t need it._

Eunkwang’s face falls and his heart drops into his gut.

_I’m sorry,_ he writes, regret washing over him. _I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I’ve never met_

_No, it’s okay,_  Changsub signs, having Eunkwang stop typing and look up into his face, meeting his honest eyes.  _It’s okay._

_I know you were just curious,_  he adds in the document.  _And you looked up some words to talk to me. That made up for it._

_I’m really sor_

“Excuse me?”

Eunkwang’s head shoots up, and he spots a woman standing by the cash register. 

“I’d like to pay,” she says, not particularly angry, but not very friendly either.

“Oh, yes, of course! I’m sorry, I’m coming!” Eunkwang says, mouthing a quick  _excuse me_  to Changsub, and he hastily gets up and makes his way over the cash till. He apologises another time for not paying attention, and, thankfully, her irritation wavers as Eunkwang quickly scans all her items and puts them all into a plastic bag. As soon as she’s left not even a minute later, Eunkwang turns around to Changsub.

_Work_ , Eunkwang signs, hoping his one word excuse of a sentence will suffice as an explanation as to why he can’t sit with him anymore, because he’d  _love_  to, talking to him makes his shift pass by ten times faster than it normally would, but he can’t help feel bad for neglecting work as much as he did, and he’d hate for someone to get seriously angry and complain for having to wait or call for him, considering he’s the only employee present and should be there for customers at all times.

_Okay,_ Changsub signs back with a quick nod. He returns his attention to his laptop and continues reading, while Eunkwang gets a mop from the back and cleans the floor, restocks the empty shelves and tidies up the check out area, all the while silently contemplating whether Changsub would want to spend more time with him, when communication is a challenge, to say the least. Granted, they get along and they quite possibly might never run out of things to talk about, but Eunkwang still feels bad for being so ignorant, for not having been able to put himself in Changsub’s shoes and be respectful about his situation, although Changsub didn’t seem angry or annoyed when he assured him it was okay.

At around eleven, Changsub shuts his laptop. He lets his eyes flutter shut, head falling back as he stretches and a few joints crack, the sound almost echoing off the walls. Eunkwang watches him throw away his trash and pack his bag, and make his way over to the check out area as he types out a message on his phone.

_Thank you for keeping me company tonight,_ Eunkwang reads, and his cheeks get warm as he waves Changsub off and tries his best to hold his gaze.

_You_ , he signs, Changsub already perking up his eyebrows in anticipation not doing anything to help him stay calm with what he’s about to ask in mind.

_Tomorrow evening_ , Eunkwang continues, but falters, his courage from a second ago already leaving him, just like the words to finish the question. He clicks his tongue and shakes his head, and Changsub must have caught on, the look in his eyes softening.

_Dinner?_  he asks, having Eunkwang’s heart skip a beat, although he’s probably just being polite and wants to help him complete the sentence, rather than ask him out on a date.

_Yes?_  Eunkwang asks back, carefully, and Changsub cracks a smile.

_Yes_ , he says, chuckling to himself at the grin spreading across Eunkwang’s face a second later. They save each other’s numbers and, his phone back in the pocket of his sweatpants, Changsub waves goodbye and leaves, the heavy glass door swinging shut behind him as he disappears into the dark, chilly night, leaving Eunkwang warm and fuzzy and unable to wipe the stupid, stupid grin off his face. He can’t help his mind wandering off, already thinking about tomorrow; a few hours of just the two of them, no one to interrupt their clumsy conversations, no fluorescent lights, and, hopefully, more than strawberry milk and peach slices for dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> finally. my first deaf fic. AND somewhat of a rarepair, but a lot of fun to write. i hope it was enjoyable to read, too.
> 
> i do have some knowledge from research and lectures ive attended on sign language, the deaf community and education of hearing impaired children, but if there are any glaring mistakes or inaccuracies regarding the subject please let me know. ([twitter](http://www.twitter.com/jungsilhoon))


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